


Rules of Abandonment

by catsilhouette



Category: Psych
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-05
Updated: 2015-11-05
Packaged: 2018-04-30 05:26:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5151965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catsilhouette/pseuds/catsilhouette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Gus pulled away, finally breathing, and stood up. He couldn't do this. He was going to college and he couldn't have an irresponsible, two-bit, barely there boyfriend. Gus had given him a chance and Shawn didn't take it, and Stanford wasn't going to allow for slip-ups because of a fried Shawn with no ambition and no place in life."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rules of Abandonment

Teenagers are universally known for doing stupid things. He himself had locked his keys inside his car on multiple occasions, slept with two girls--not at the same time, obviously--who turned out to be...well, not-girlfriend-material, and gotten sucked off in a closet during what was supposed to be a study session. How they ended up in a closet in the first place he wasn't sure, but Shawn had never been one for studying anyway and well, he should have known better than to think he was turning over a new leaf.

It didn't help that this "new leaf" period coincided with the Shawn-just-became-a-child-of-divorce period, which also overlapped with the bad part of Shawn's rebellious phase and the stressful part of Gus' applying-to-college period. And yet, none of this was an excuse for this cool picking-up-and-leaving act he'd adopted with a new sense of liberation. He finally got it, this whole leaving thing, he decided as he threw away yet another old sweatshirt he knew didn't belong to him but had somehow managed to creep into his closet.

And all that time, being obsessed with packing and scholarships and shower shoes, he'd forgotten that it had been twenty-two days since he'd last talked to Shawn. They didn't live close enough anymore and even if they did, he had work to do and applications to fill out and essays to perfect, he couldn't be lounging around drinking sodas and ranking movies based on hotness. It wasn't...mature, not anymore. Life was going to be taking them places, and if those places were different and far away from each other, then, well, so be it. 

It was harsh, maybe. But he'd had enough. Shawn's hair had gotten longer and longer, and somehow it looked...off, greasy, even, and he'd stopped asking for movie tickets or pencils or five bucks. He'd stopped asking for things altogether, and after one look at the crowded table with all the cheer kids, he'd slunk off and eaten his lunch outside, under that overgrown tree all the younger kids flocked to. Gus had seen him out of the corner of his eye but had pretended not to, and this should have hurt more, turning his back on his best friend like it was nothing, but it felt a little like a punch to the stomach did, and when that terrible feeling was gone, he moved on.

He was the same best friend who had pushed him for years, who left him in Old Man Fuller's yard, who had stolen his clothes for years (either to wear them to to prevent Gus from wearing them - it was hard to tell at times), who had bought him his first (illegal) drink, who had stolen that pack of cigarettes and made him smoke it all (which is what had given him asthma, probably) who had sabotaged his (very real) chances of winning the Spelling Bee, and had gotten them into his first car accident. All in all, he was better off, right? There was no monkey business in college, no blanket forts and fake extreme sports and none of this dorky sneaking around with a handful of copied keys. 

The times had been good. Sleepovers in junior high - sleeping under the table in matching sleeping bags with their faces inches apart, staying up until god-knows-when and debating the correct amount of facial hair Billy Zane should have, making sloppy towers of waffles drenched in caramel in the late mornings, that was fun. They’d had a lot of fun spending their girls-have-cooties phase at each other’s side but now it was over. It was over like an apple turnover.

That didn’t make sense. Shawn said things like that, he didn’t. 

People would have laughed at that, because no matter how awkward Shawn was in front of all Gus’ friends, he did have charisma. His methods were certainly...unorthodox, but he had managed to get Gus a prom date after Christina ditched him (rather rudely) and so yeah, he had to endure questions about his prognosis and whether she could do anything at all to help but they’d made out and she was nice and he’d had fun. And Shawn was on some weird mission to help Gus’ popularity, as if he needed it, as if he wasn’t already being invited to parties that Shawn was being dragged along to, either by him or some other dork. 

And then October 15th happened. 

Well, actually, October 15th was a totally normal day. So was the 16th, as far as he was concerned. But the 17th was a Monday and he did notice the empty seat. He saw it on the 18th too, and on the 19th, someone started using it for their jacket.

A part of him was rude enough to claim it knew that Shawn would drop out, that he had a tendency to leave things unfinished and why shouldn't that carry over to his education? But another part of him insisted that Shawn wouldn't skip school for three days unless he'd left town altogether. He'd mentioned it a few times before, but Gus had rolled his eyes and refused to take him seriously.

And now, heart pounding and mouth dry, he reached and knocked three times on the Spencers' front door, hoping that Shawn hadn't left just yet, that they'd at least be able to talk to each other. He felt horrible, staring at the kitchen through the little window on the front door, feeling the pent-up hatred of the past weeks crash around his ears. This was off, this was wrong this was so trecherously far from okay he didn't know where the horizon was. He was going to be sick. He heard the latch slide and prayed it was Shawn and not Mr. Spencer's tired face he would see. Something inside him was telling him to cry and yet he knew he couldn't manage it if his life depended on it.

But it was Shawn's face he saw, Shawn's slightly contorted, red, freckled face. His eyes widened.

"You don't have the cap on and you're not holding my thirteen inch extra cheese, pineapple and jalapeno pizza, so I'm going to have to refrain from tipping you. Or talking to you at all, for that matter." Shawn mumbled as he started to shut the door.

"Shawn, no, wait!" Gus stuck his arm inside and looked up at Shawn. His eyes were fixed on his feet - one was bare and one had an old blue sock on it, one of those childish ones with the toes. He watched Shawn wiggle them unceremoniously, and shut his eyes in resignation when he heard Shawn sigh.

"Dude, I'm kinda tired. If you're not going to sleep over..." Shawn made a vague gesture that could technically mean anything from 'open this can please' to 'you should do that again' but was probably actually along the lines of 'please leave quietly'.

Gus took a deep breath. "This is unfair and I'm sorry but I've had a lot on my mind." He said it in one rushed breath and anticipated the response with a pounding heart. They'd had fights before, all the damn time, but this was different this was adult and permanent and Shawn hadn't come to school for days on end which hadn't happened since they'd both gotten chicken pox.

Shawn pushed the door open so hard it crashed against the wall with a thud. "Yeah, I guess, whatever. Come on in." He was running his hands through his atrocious hair, but Gus thought he saw the hint of a smile as Shawn turned and locked the door.

"I thought you were pizza." Shawn mumbled, gesturing upstairs. "You can wait, we can watch a movie."

Gus shrugged and headed up the stairs, pausing briefly to see that one of the pictures, the really nice one they look when Shawn was cute and had a gap-toothed grin, was broken - the glass was shattered and falling out of the pane. He looked down and saw that he'd accidentally stepped on part of it, his shoe crunching the shards into fine, glittery powder.

"Uh...Shawn..." Gus started, turning around to apologize. Shawn waved at him from the foot of the stairs, his eyes expressionless.

"It's cool, it's leftovers from last night." The doorbell rang then, and Shawn whirled around to answer it, talking nonsense to the pizza delivery guy about nachos and whether he would consider making a nacho-topped pizza. Shawn tried to blow him a kiss as he clambered in his car through the window and sped away.

"Shawn, that's disgusting," Gus muttered as he led the way, snapping the light on in Shawn's wreck of a room. Magazines were strewn everywhere; most were left open to pages of golden celebrities in spandex with gleaming white smiles. There was a plate with a half-finished piece of chocolate cake on top of a dangerously teetering pile of comic books, and a small heap of laundry seemed to be growing from under the bed. Shawn's chair was piled with his school things - a crumpled up blue backpack, two notebooks with papers sticking out every which way, and a biology textbook with a dick drawn on the pages.

Gus wrinkled his nose. "Dude, this is gross."

Shawn shurgged and kicked aside a sweater to make room for the pizza box. He set it down and cleared a pair of jeans and a couple of shirts (one of which Gus was sure was his) and patted the carpet invitingly. "Sit,"

Gus did, and he shook his head when Shawn offered him a slice of pizza. He would have, he definitely wanted to, but there was a seriously important issue at hand right how.

"Shawn, what happened?" Gus asked softly. He moved his hand to Shawn's forearm and felt the hair there raise slightly, and immediately moved his hand away. "You...you don't have to tell me or anything, I was just gonna bring you some homework or something..."

Shawn stared at him and blew hair out of his eyes. "Nothing happened, Gus." He kept staring though, gazing at Gus with a little bit of wonderment and a lot of something else that was halfway between amazement and pure admiration, and then he was moving his head closer, and he was leaning it against Gus' shoulder gently.

It was uncomfortable but Gus stayed still; he felt Shawn move his head and felt his nose rub up against his neck and he held his breath, waiting for whatever was going to happen. He wasn't going to ruin this. He was determined not to.

Shawn's lips grazed his cheek, near his ear, and Gus knew somehow he was holding his breath. He tried to force himself to breathe, knowing that Shawn didn't have an inhaler, and his own house was too far should something happen, but the air seemed trapped in his chest. He closed his eyes when Shawn kissed him, still unsure of his respiratory capacity, and felt Shawn's hand on his shoulder, drawing him closer. Shawn tasted sweet, of pineapple and forgiveness, and Gus thought inexplicably of all the cheer kids and what they would say if Shawn sat with them at lunch, which he would if he was going to be Gus' boyfriend, which would obviously happen because Shawn was his best friend and a really good kisser and how else was this supposed to end?

Gus pulled away, finally breathing, and stood up. He couldn't do this. He was going to college and he couldn't have an irresponsible, two-bit, barely there boyfriend. Gus had given him a chance and Shawn didn't take it, and Stanford wasn't going to allow for slip-ups because of a fried Shawn with no ambition and no place in life.

So Gus turned around and left, he let the door swing behind him and he walked deliberately, out of Shawn's room and out of his house and his street and quite possibly his life. Gus stuffed his hands in his pockets on the way back, and counted his steps until his own street, his own house, his own room. And then he found his inhaler and finally took a long, deep breath and resolved to be okay with this course of events, and to be okay with continuing on with his life without Shawn and his jokes and sarcasm and ridiculous ideas because he was a mature adult now and couldn't afford to do any of this with his life. His heart hammered in protest and he could feel his hands shake a little, and he shut his eyes and brought his inhaler to his mouth again, telling himself he was going to be okay, and Shawn was going to be okay too, and he would hopefully see Shawn at school tomorrow. And if he didn't, well, that was the universe telling him he was right.


End file.
